Tag Archives: After Effects

I completed the kickstarter video and I am quite proud of myself for doing so because initially I hated doing the lip sync animation. I don’t know how some people do it, because only having 1 minute and 12 seconds was a lot. However, once I actually watched it back I was really satisfied with the outcome, and look forward to trying it again in the future.

I watched a really straightforward tutorial for how to create the lip sync. Initially I was going to attempt to use shapes and morph the mouth using different keyframes but this proved both problematic for creating the mouth shapes that had teeth and it didn’t look right.

So watching the tutorial you simply create the layers of different phonemes in illustrator, bring them into after effects and make each layer one key frame. Each keyframe pays after the other and then you just cut the comp down to the correct time.

Once you add the slider, expression and control (watch the video for how) you simply slide the slider until you get the appropriate phoneme and key it.

However, I noticed (prior to receiving Danny’s proper character versions)that I had forgotten to make the layer 3D so there was no shadow from them and also they don’t blink. Another issue is, I designed the characters in photoshop and thought I turned off the white background layer but apparently hadn’t, leading me to key out the white background and subsequently removing the whites of their eyes. Whoops.

I rectified these mistakes in the final version, although just before I hit render I thought I had gone deaf. It turned out at some point when editing the video I deleted the narration so I had to bring it back in and edited it again and try and match it up with the lip sync. Nothing is ever straightforward with me. Anyway… Here’s the kick-starter:

Danny did the concept art for this, (which you can see in the background and the tow main characters at the front).

I’ve been learning quite a bit about after effects the past few months and when Danny and I discussed creating the logo for, the then, Faolen Studios it came in handy.

Danny liked the idea of a jumping wolf design and so I created this.

I firstly drew the shape of the wolf jumping in Illustrator then went into after effects. I made a black background, added a layer with triangular particles flying out and then brought in the wolf as a new layer and changed the alpha settings.

Then when I was satisfied with how the particles looked in the wolf and that there were no gaps, I rendered out a frame as a .jpeg.

However, after thinking about it, Danny thought it was too detailed so I bumped up the particle size and got this.

Now Danny has created this logo, (not the finished version). Also trying to think of a new name for the company at the minute it is now Blu Q Studios.

Here is the lamp morphing into a monster. I don’t like that it goes over itself and I don’t fully understand why it’s doing this. I can move the points on the shape but it still seems to just fold over itself regardless to get to the next shape.

I intend to have the transformation process obscured by a fast blur and have the stages moved closer together at a later stage and hopefully that will, if not fix the problem, at least obscure it.

I need to really focus on the animatic at them moment so I’ll return to this issue at a later date.

This is the result of following the tutorials cited below which taught you how to use the puppet tool to rig in after effects. Exactly what I learnt from those tutorials is detailed in the previous post “Character Rigging”.

I figured this would be a useful skill to have, and also it seemed pretty fun to do as well.

Things Learnt:

Illustrator

hold alt and drag on a layer and it will duplicate it

when moving shapes to different layers > select the shape > click and drag the dot in the layer panel up to the new layer

My Character

After Effects

Import the illustrator file as a composition

Use the pan button to move the anchor points from the centre of the screen to the bending points on the character e.g. for the arm, place the anchor point at the shoulder

Pick-whip the various body parts the the appropriate parents, e.g. the head is parented to the body, the hair is parented to the head etc

Parent the body (which everything is ultimately what every limb is connected to) to a null object so then you can scale the body via the null. If you don’t use the null to scale, then every limb scales proportionally to itself and not in relation to the character overall

Puppet Tool : simply click the pin icon and then click along the centre of the image to add the pins where the character should bend. Recommended expansion is 2 and triangles is 450.

Animation wise, have the “puppet” label selected down in the composition tab, and then simply move the pins into the required position and it will automatically key them

Parallax : make all layers 3d > create a camera with depth of field enabled > create a null object and parent the camera to it (use the null object to move the camera) > simply play about with the depth of field & aperture settings in the camera until you’re happy with the results